Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/13/a-cop-in-matthews-north-carolina-choked-a-handcuffed-man-and-the-city-kept-the-video-secret-for-3-years.html
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“Everyone hates lawyers.” As you said it I imagine that you are attributing your motives to “everyone.” I expected better from you Mr. Beschizza. How many others of your readership are lawyers who have dedicated their careers to justice? What other group of the Boingboing audience are you going to hate on next?
I can understand being upset by that comment, but at the same time law is one of the few areas where you have people on both sides of an issue. With the amount of recording devices society has now I, personally, am not sure all “crimes” really or legally should need to go to trial. If you have video footage of someone committing a crime, especially with that person being a police officer, there isn’t much to argue is there? I realize there are “always” extenuating circumstances and all, but sometimes a crime is just a crime. Of course I’m not a lawyer, I did engineering, and things are a lot more logical and solid in that world.
I always wonder about the chain of events that has to happen for something like this to get press attention. Because it’s clearly happening orders of magnitude more frequently than is reported. The reported cases alone prove that - you have veteran police officers who come to public scrutiny over one event, but it turns out they’d been doing it continuously since they got the jobs many years earlier (and none of those acts got any attention). So what has to happen for these cases to be made public and the perpetrators held to any sort of account? It seems like sheer luck more than anything.
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That got me dismissed from jury service a few times.
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Look, this cop is guilty AF, but what you are suggesting is not how our justice system works and definitely not how it should work. Guilt is never presumed. The burden is on the state to prove it in a court of law. If we start allowing, “Oh, there’s a video, we don’t need a trial,” that is not going to be used mainly against people in power who commit crimes. It’s going to get used against poor people and especially against people of color.
I didn’t take Rob’s comment that way, and I will hopefully be a lawyer soon (I’m taking the bar exam in July). Lawyers are a commonly hated on profession. And honestly, it’s often well deserved. Lawyers are aware of this and typically develop a thick skin when it comes to comments like that. And we just respond with, “Everyone hates lawyers until they need one.” Anyway, your comment is off topic.
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Time and again institutions go to extraordinary lengths to protect themselves and their members from reputational damage.
What are the thought processes involved in these decision chains?
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